Public: Brad Greenberg (NYU Furman Center) contextualizes Mangin's academic writing

Hello, Council Members.

I'm Brad Greenberg.

I'm the Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center.

The NYU Furman Center is a joint academic research center of the NYU School of Law and the Robert F.

Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

We're an organization committed to leveraging rigorous evidence-based research on housing and urban development.

And we're here today to talk and contextualize some of what's been discussed in the academic literature.

A couple things I want to say first about the Board of Standard and Appeals and the role it plays in New York City's land use process.

Unlike DCP, or City Planning Commission, they don't take as active a role in land use policy, including initiating changes to planning policy and ushering items through the Euler process, but they do determine

individual applications and approve and deny special permits and variances, which you've heard about today.

So the BSA's role is really a highly structured, cabined process focused on reviewing individual applications, and it requires someone with a lot of technical expertise in the case law and regulations governing land use in New York City.

So the council should be very focused on the nominee's expertise in this highly technical area.

The other thing I'll say about the Board of Standards and Appeals is the structure and governance has a lot of checks and balances in the process.

So there are five members appointed for a six-year term.

The mayor appoints one member as the chair, but everything is done by a majority vote, even though the chair oversees public hearings.

They also impose in the statute governing the Board of Standards and Appeals a lot of transparency requirements, including obligations to go through a community board process, as well as solicit council input on individual applications.

And the council has previously in 2017 also changed the governance of the BSA and retains a decent amount of power over how it's structured.

So that's important to remember.

There's a lot of checks and balances in the BSA itself.

I do also want to say one thing about Mr.

Mangin's 2014 publication, which I know has come up a lot today.

Obviously, we're one of the leading academic research centers on housing policy.

I just want to say that the article itself does build on many decades of work and research, including Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law, and Bill Fischel's book, and previous books on home voters and the economics of land use.

And it's absolutely within the scope of the academic literature.

I'm sure there are words everyone would take back.

Sorry, please wrap it up.

Thank you.

That's all I wanted to say about the academic work.

Thanks.